Welcome to the new off-season series, aptly named ‘Final Fantasy’. In this series, Razzball will be focusing the spotlight on certain players that either exceeded or fell-by-the-wayside of our expectations, and we’ll briefly touch them with our thoughts, legally. Despite rumor (and the series name), we will not be discussing anything +5 to magic missile. Unless there’s actually a NFL player that shoots missiles. And has, like, an amulet to vitality or something like that. Michael Vick’s -98 amulet of dog-caring will be excluded in this particular instance. Regardless, let’s get to the spotlight for today, and that’s Jordan Reed.

Rush

YDS

TD

REC

YDS

TD

ESPN Projections

–

–

–

9

109

1

CBS Projections

–

–

–

12

168

1

Razzball Projections

–

–

–

–

–

–

2013 Actual Stats

1

18

0

45

499

3

Going into last summer, I saw a certain amount of upside in a tight end playing for the Washington football team. However, that tight end is not the player named in the title of this post. Instead, I was very intrigued with Fred Davis, and I wasn’t the only one. From weeks 3-6 (four games) last year, he had posted 4.75 catches and 65 yards on 5.25 targets per game. However, he got hurt in week seven and missed the rest of the season. Technically, I was right about Washington having a tight end with upside… but instead, that tight end actually ended up being a rookie from the University of Florida, and his name is Jordan Reed.

Reed only had 33 snaps in week 11 and left with a concussion, one that would wind up ending his season. But his final numbers in just nine games was 45 catches, 499 yards, and three touchdowns on 59 targets. If you expand those numbers over a full season, he would have placed as the 7th tight end in standard (Non-PPR) scoring. Also, he would have finished 7th among tight ends for targets.

After the week five bye, almost all of Jordan Reed’s numbers went up. The first thing that jumps out during this stretch were the snaps. He had four games with 70% or higher. In his first three games, his highest was only 48%, and that was in week two. With more snaps, he, of course, saw more targets (+2.3) per game. In three of those six games, he had at least nine targets. In those three games, he had no less than six catches with at least 62 yards and/or a touchdown.

After breaking down his statistics, I really like the upside of Jordan Reed. He does have a history of concussion issues, and there’s certainly a lot of risk here. (They go all the way back to his days as a Florida Gator.) But if he can stay healthy, I can see him producing as one of the top tight ends for the 2014 season.